As the tiny boats with their two-person crews circle tightly and accelerate into the wind, each one following yet barely missing the stern of the vessel in front of them, Bainbridge High School sailing team Head Coach Susan Kaseler smiles.

“It’s like water ballet,” she said looking out over her spring squad, in the rather chilly water for their first practices of the season last week.

It’s not great yet, she seemed to say then with a small shrug, but it’s pretty early in the season yet.

All told, the BHS sailing team consists of 25 total students this year, a new program record.

Two of the sailors are students from North Kitsap High, where a team is in the early stages of development, Kaseler said.

Earlier in the year, more than 39 students had expressed an interest in participating, far too many for the team’s existing supervisors to handle. Sailing has been, Kaseler said, historically a “no cut” team, and she hopes to keep it that way. To that end, fortunately, only the more serious sailors came forward recently and the team rounded out at a more manageable size.

Of course, the early days of every season bring with it the joys of capsize drills.

“I like to get them hooked in the sport first,” Kaseler explained. “A lot of people like to do it the first day.”

The cold waters off the team’s downtown Winslow Harbor training float make for an icy baptism for both the returning experienced sailors and the freshman newbies, who take turns working in pairs to turn over a capsized vessel.

This year’s squad consists of almost exactly the same number of freshman and seniors, oddly enough, and Kaseler said that though she is not thrilled to be losing eight experienced athletes, she is also excited to see an attraction to the sport among the younger students.

The team’s first official test of the year will take place close to home Saturday, March 14 at the Eagle Harbor Regatta.

BHS has been a dominant name in regional team racing events for several seasons, often placing or even winning two or three titles a year since their first official competition season in 1996.

It’s a trend which Kaseler said she is confident will continue.

According to the team lore, “the Bainbridge High School sailing team was formed in 1988 by a few students who had been sailing in the B.I. Parks District summer program and who wanted to sail as a high school sport. At that time there were no other local high school sailing teams.”

The Interscholastic Sailing Association required at least five teams from area schools to constitute an official region.

Not to be deterred, John DeMeyer, the team’s original head coach and parks department sailing program coordinator, recruited other groups in the area to form teams from five schools to create the Northwest District of ISSA. Along with the first two team captains and their parents, he also successfully lobbied to have the school jointly sponsor the sailing team with the parks department.

The season is made up of weekly competitions (regattas), several of which require a bit of travel on the part of the team.

Each team is comprised of two divisions, and everybody sails at the same time in the same wind, Kaseler explained.

“The team fields the fastest sailors in each division, in several races, to earn a win in the regatta,” she said. “All the schools sail at the same time, sharing an upwind, downwind, upwind course, with a gate at the leeward mark.”

Sailing emphasis teamwork and independent thinking as much if not more so than any of the more traditional sports, Kaseler said, and with some courses only marginally supervised by event officials. Thus, student sailors are often put into situations in which their own character is essential for success.

Though the water may stay cold, the competition will heat up quickly and nearly every weekend after the first regatta sees the team facing some kind of competition or scrimmage event.